1. Field
The disclosure relates to a method, apparatus, system, and article of manufacture for grouping packets.
2. Background
A network may be a system for communication between a plurality of devices. In networking, a communications protocol or a network protocol may be the specification of a set of rules for a particular type of communication. Different protocols may describe different aspects of a single communication. Taken together, the different protocols that describe different aspects of the single communication may form a protocol stack.
Computer networks may be implemented using a variety of protocol stack architectures, where a protocol stack is a particular software implementation of a computer networking protocol suite. A protocol stack may have a plurality of protocol modules. The protocol modules may be referred to as protocol layers in the protocol stack.
For example, a protocol stack may include a Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) layer running over an Internet Protocol (IP) layer, where the IP layer runs over an Ethernet layer. Operating systems may have software interfaces between various layers of protocol stacks. For example, the Microsoft Windows* operating system has the Network Driver Interface Specification (NDIS) interface. The NDIS interface may define a plurality of Application Programming Interfaces (API) for devices, such as, Network Interface cards (NIC). The NDIS APIs may be used for integrating protocol drivers and device drivers. Other operating systems may have other software interfaces for various layers of protocol stacks. Microsoft Windows is a trademark of Microsoft Corp.